


Take Care

by quantumducky



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 01, Sickfic, TMAHC Week, martin having a crush is mentioned but it's mostly platonic, this is only rated T bc i cant remember if there are swears in it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:22:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26171113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumducky/pseuds/quantumducky
Summary: Martin gets sick while living in the archives. He's sure he can deal with it himself- just sleep it off, no need to make a big deal of it.Jon, it turns out, doesn't agree.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Jonathan Sims
Comments: 13
Kudos: 131





	Take Care

**Author's Note:**

> "i'll just finish up this fic and then i'll go to bed," i said six entire hours ago
> 
> i am so tired but at least i got something done for the h/c week even if it's. not on the right day

The signs were there as soon as Martin woke up. The old document storage room was always cold- seeing as it was designed with the needs of old documents in mind, and not the comfort of people- but he didn’t  _ always _ feel like it was impossible to get warm, even with his thickest jumper on and a blanket wrapped around him. His throat was scratchy, and a cup of tea didn’t fix it; his head ached even before he turned on the lights, which had never seemed so harsh before. It was obvious he was sick, no matter how badly he wanted to brush it off as nothing more than a bad night of sleep in a dusty archive.

But really, what was he supposed to do about it? It wasn’t as if he could call out of work and stay home when the two were currently the same place. And if he was going to be  _ at _ work either way, he might as well  _ do _ his work, right? The alternative was staying in here all day, dealing with concern from Tim and Sasha and likely judgement from Jon, whom he doubted had ever taken a sick day in his life. It would be much easier to just… go about his day as normal, take some of the cold medicine he kept stashed in his desk just-in-case, and hope it would be gone by tomorrow.

It didn’t take long for him to start wishing he had another option. When the rest of the archive staff arrived, he easily excused his lack of energy as not having slept well, but it was hard to concentrate on work when looking at his computer screen and reading the sometimes small text of archival documents kept making his head feel worse. He had to slip away a few times to lie down in the dark, though he didn’t think anyone noticed. He retreated to the document storage room, shut off the lights and curled up on the cot until he wasn’t actively about to cry, then dragged himself back out to his desk before his absence could get too conspicuous. He made entirely too much tea and tried to act normal and muddled through some research, and eventually- not near as soon as he would’ve liked- the day was over.

He didn’t really…  _ remember _ much of it, to be honest. Cold medicine would do that to a person, if being ill in the first place hadn’t done the job already. He could only hope he hadn’t said or done anything embarrassing, or- no more than he  _ always _ seemed to embarrass himself when he interacted with Jon, at the very least. He’d be stunned if he made it through a day without saying  _ anything _ that sounded idiotic even under the best of circumstances.

Now wasn’t the time to review his mental highlight reel of Incredibly Stupid Things Martin Blackwood Has Said To His Boss, though. It would only make him feel worse. He already felt  _ terrible. _ The medicine helped, but he was pretty sure he’d cancelled it out by working when he should have been resting, especially where his poor head was concerned. Plus, he was starting to get all weepy and emotional- it always happened, he should have expected it, but that didn’t stop him feeling pathetic for it. He was a grown man, he didn’t  _ need _ anyone to- to check his forehead with the back of their hand to see if he had a fever. That was what a  _ thermometer _ was for. (He did, by the way. He was actually slightly warmer than he’d been that morning. Which was funny, because that was the opposite of what it  _ felt _ like.)

The  _ point _ was, he wasn’t a child, and he didn’t need taking care of just because he was a, a bit under the weather. He could heat up his own soup in the break room microwave and put himself to bed to sleep it off, and that was exactly what he did, and he  _ refused _ to let himself dwell on anything silly, like how nice it would be if he had someone to do those things  _ for _ him. He didn’t, and that was all there was to it, he told himself sternly. Then, body aching from a full day of ignoring its demands to just lie down and properly rest, he told himself to go to sleep.

Martin woke up, and it was dark, and he was afraid. There was- there had been- he couldn’t remember. A dream. He’d had a- an absolutely  _ terrifying _ dream. He couldn’t quite remember where he was. It was dark, though, and freezing cold. He’d gone to bed as well bundled up as he could be, and still, he was shivering now. His clothes were almost soaked through with sweat. That… that wouldn’t do. Wasn’t comfortable, if nothing else. He should get up and change, and maybe figure out what was making it so cold in here.

Easier said than done, that. Every muscle in his body hurt, and it was worse when he moved. It wouldn’t get any better unless he got up and did something about it, though. He couldn’t bring himself to leave the blankets and be even colder, so he tried to bring them along. Maybe that wasn’t the best idea. He didn’t get out of bed so much as fall, and the floor wasn’t soft, and for a few seconds all he could do was groan pitifully, tears filling his eyes. Everything was so awful and he couldn’t even do  _ standing up _ right.

He managed it eventually. He might have given up and gone back to sleep, but the floor was too uncomfortable for that, so here he was: getting back to his feet,  _ not _ falling this time despite everything tilting around him, and shuffling carefully to the door. He hadn’t thought ahead as far as what he was going to do on the other side, but he opened it anyway.

There was someone right in front of him- hard to tell who, in the sudden blinding light of the corridor- and when Martin opened the door, they both scared the hell out of each other. Martin yelped and stumbled back, which fortunately wound him up sitting on the cot rather than back on the floor with a concussion. The other person jumped and shouted, too-  _ “Martin!” _ in a tone almost more scolding than startled, and after a long moment of processing, he recognized the voice as Jon.

Probably, under any other circumstances, he would’ve hated for Jon- or  _ anyone- _ to see him like this. As it was, he was already so miserable that feeling bad about anything else on top of it would have taken energy he didn’t have. Instead, he just squinted blearily at Jon, who was slowly walking over to him, stiff and awkward. Something was odd about this, if he could just find the words for it.

“What’re you…” He trailed off, tried to start again, only to open and close his mouth without saying anything at all. “It’s late,” he finally put together. “You. Y’should be…” He waved a hand vaguely in a gesture much smaller than intended, on account of how, once he started making it, he realized how much effort gesturing required. “...not here.  _ Home.” _ That was the word. Jon should have been at home, comfortable, getting a good night’s sleep. Martin didn’t have much choice in the matter, but  _ he _ did, and here he was not doing it.

Jon frowned down at him. When had he gotten so close? “I- remembered something I needed to come back for. What’s wrong with you?”

The nice thing about it being so difficult to think was that, by the time Martin was able to process what he’d said, he was also pretty sure he hadn’t meant it in a rude way. He shrugged, although it was so much work that he wasn’t sure he did a good enough job for Jon to actually notice. “Sick.” He leaned back against the wall, which led to slumping over until he was practically lying down. That wasn’t good, he’d meant to do the opposite of this. He shot Jon an annoyed look, because really, he’d have been halfway down the corridor now if not for him interrupting.

On the other hand, his legs felt awfully watery after only standing on them for a few seconds. Maybe it was for the best he hadn’t gotten far. Why did being sick have to make him so  _ useless? _ His eyes stung yet again, and he closed them, willing Jon to go away. It wasn’t like he expected him to  _ help, _ but he could at least be decent enough not to interrogate him when it was the middle of the night and he felt horrible.

Despite his efforts, when he opened his eyes again, Jon was still there. He was still frowning at him, but it was a different sort of frown. “I- I heard a noise. I was just coming to make sure nothing had happened,” he explained.

“Mm.” So that was why he was still here. Martin nodded slowly and explained back, “Fell off the… this. Bed thing. S’fine.” Now he knew it wasn’t anything for  _ him _ to worry about, and he could go home and sleep, and Martin could go back to… probably not sleeping at all. He couldn’t even remember what he would need to do to make that possible, let alone actually do it. And hopefully Jon wouldn’t bring this up tomorrow, when Martin would be awake enough to have his usual amount of shame again. He closed his eyes again and scrunched his face up at a particularly harsh shiver.

“Shit,” he heard Jon say quietly. “Martin- Martin, look at me.”

Martin didn’t want to, but he also didn’t want to argue, so he looked up.

“When you say you’re  _ sick- _ tell me what, what symptoms you’re having.”

That sounded… hard. Lots of talking.  _ Words. _ “Why?” he asked, or rather, whined. Why couldn’t he leave him  _ alone? _

“Because I need to make sure it isn’t  _ serious,” _ he snapped.  _ “Martin. _ Will you-  _ please _ just tell me how you feel?”

Well. At least he’d said please. And he was too stubborn to go away until he got an answer, so Martin did his best. “I’m… fever. Cold. And.” He coughed- talking wasn’t only hard to find words for, it was rough on his throat. “That,” he mumbled. “Head hurts… just-  _ hurts. _ All of it. Everything. I, I can’t sleep, I-” He stopped talking and bit his lip before he could go from describing symptoms to telling Jon exactly how miserable he was, and probably crying. This was his boss, he had to be professional, no matter how weird the situation was.

“Ah. That sounds… bad.” Martin laughed at that- hopefully he wouldn’t be too offended. It was just,  _ yeah. _ He’d  _ noticed. _ Jon bit his lip and then said, as if mostly to himself, “You shouldn’t be here.”

Martin blinked at him, and he seemed to realize what a strange statement that was and tried to clarify.

“I just  _ mean _ it isn’t good for you. It’s-” He gestured around them, encompassing what they both already knew about the inadequacies of document storage in terms of comfort. “You’d recover better somewhere else.”

“Where’m I goin’ to  _ go,” _ Martin pointed out- a good point, he maintained, no matter how muffled it was by the way he’d turned his head and smushed his face against the pillow.

“Well, I- I have a sofa.” Jon said this as if it should have been obvious, presumably in an attempt to cover up how much it wasn’t. Martin lifted his head again despite the effort, just to squint at him properly. He scowled at the wall. “I know it’s not  _ ideal, _ but it would be  _ warmer, _ at least, and- I just don’t want you- incapacitated like this any longer than you have to be. I’m down an assistant until you’re well again, after all.”

Martin huffed another tired laugh. It was funny, the suggestion that Jon would actually  _ miss _ his contributions, when he never seemed anything but annoyed by Martin’s work. You’d think he’d be glad to have him out of the way for a few days, not messing anything up.

“That’s not-” His voice caught, and came back a little softer. “Martin, I do… appreciate the work you do, whatever I’ve said about it. I suppose I didn’t have the, the best first impression, and it- well. I  _ am _ trying to be, ah, fairer, to you, after- all this.”

Which was nice to hear, obviously, but Martin had to wonder how he’d known what he was thinking. Maybe he’d gone back to sleep after all, and this was a dream? That would explain it. And explain why he kept hesitating; the dream-version of him was having the same difficulty putting words together as Martin’s brain.

Jon looked at him again, and his mouth twitched faintly in tired amusement. “You’re not going to remember a word of this conversation, are you?” he sighed. “Right, ah… here.” He found a half-empty bottle of water on the floor beside the cot and put it in Martin’s hand. “Drink some water. I’m going to get a cab.”

He did, although his hands shook and almost as much of the water spilled as actually went in his mouth. Was Jon going home, then? That was good. He shouldn’t have been at work so late in the first place. Martin huddled into the blankets and the cot, energy spent, and went back to trying to sleep… for all of fifteen minutes.

Wasn’t Jon supposed to have left? Well, he was back now, or else Martin had only imagined that. He didn’t know, he could barely open his eyes. Jon didn’t seem to understand that- he kept prodding at him, and saying things, telling him he needed to get up. Martin tried to tell him he couldn’t, but his voice wouldn’t work- he heard himself making wordless little noises of protest- and Jon really did sound rather urgent, and… he’d gone from nudging to trying to pull Martin upright himself, and little enough of Martin’s brain was working that the one functional bit could only think about  _ Jon touching him _ and how much he would like that to continue. Jon was warm- not  _ very, _ but much more so than anything else in the room. Martin wanted to hug him. That was what got him to sit up, in the end. Not that he  _ succeeded _ necessarily; lifting his arms was hard, but he sat up and tilted toward Jon and wound up leaning into his chest.

Jon wrapped his arms around him- wonderful. He tried to lift Martin to his feet and nearly fell over himself in the process- less wonderful. He could get hurt, doing that. Martin didn’t want to stand up, but not quite as much as he wanted Jon not to hurt himself, so he went along with it despite how tired he was. Jon put an arm around him again to guide him along, and let him lean against him as they walked, so maybe it was worth it.

He blinked, and then the air was… different. On his face. Outside? When did they…? Jon helped him sit in the back of a cab and went round to get in himself. Martin closed his eyes again. Now they were somewhere else. Jon pulled him out of the cab, and there were some stairs, and then he was sitting on an unfamiliar sofa and Jon had finally stopped making him walk places.

He had to admit, it was much more comfortable here than where he’d been earlier. The blankets from the cot were still wrapped around him haphazardly, and he could hear Jon moving around somewhere outside his vision. He drifted off for a bit. When he resurfaced hazily to consciousness, there were even more blankets layered on top of him, tucked in at the edges and everything, and Jon… Jon was pulling his hand back, looking almost guilty. “I need to check your temperature,” he whispered. Martin didn’t see the reading on the thermometer, but he saw Jon frowning intently at it. “I don’t suppose you remember what it was earlier today?”

Of course he didn’t. He didn’t even remember how he got here. Jon sighed something under his breath and walked away, coming back after what seemed like only a second, thermometer gone and his hands full of other things- medicine, and a cup of tea, which he coaxed Martin to hold. He blinked down at it while Jon fussed with packaging. After a few seconds, he felt hot tears fall on his already hot face. He didn’t know why on earth he would be crying right now, but there it was. He hid his face in the mug of tea, although it was still too hot to comfortably drink. When he looked up again, Jon was watching him. He pressed a few pills into his hand and kept watching while he swallowed them, and then he took the mug when Martin’s grip faltered and set it on a table nearby.

By the time Jon told him to get some sleep and left the room, it was a slight relief to no longer be the sole focus of his attention. It… it was  _ good _ attention, and Martin soaked it up, but it was… intense? Felt like he was trying to read his mind just by looking at him hard enough. He wouldn’t have been able to sleep well, with Jon still giving him that look. Now it was just him, finally comfortable under all the blankets Jon had tucked around him. Martin curled up sideways and cried his confusing tears until he was asleep.

The  _ next _ time he woke up, he was… significantly less calmly accepting of the whole situation.

He was also feeling much better, but that wasn’t quite his first concern, because he was  _ in Jon’s flat. _ On his sofa, where he’d been sleeping all night, because Jon had been so convinced he was doing too badly to stay in the archives that he’d  _ brought him home with him. _ Was it worth recovering from the fever if he was only going to die of embarrassment instead?

While he was staring at the ceiling, trying to come up with some way to escape this situation with whatever pride he had left, Jon emerged from what must have been his bedroom. He was still wearing what he’d slept in, and he froze when he saw Martin as if he’d forgotten he was there.

He visibly cycled through a range of emotions before finding something to say. “Martin, ah… good morning. I, I don’t know if you remember- you had quite a fever last night, and I, uh-”

“I remember,” Martin rasped, hoping to save them both the awkward explanation. It seemed that while the fever had gone down by morning, his sore throat had only gotten worse. He coughed and winced.

Jon nodded, relieved. “Right. Good. You- you seem to be feeling better? Compared to last night,” he added defensively when Martin gave him a disbelieving look.

God, he was so- so  _ different. _ Martin never would’ve shot him a look like that when they were at work, mainly because if he  _ had _ Jon would’ve made some needlessly snippy comment and then told him to get back to doing his job. But, well. He was in his  _ pajamas, _ and his hair was a mess, and he’d been so concerned about Martin’s health he had insisted he come sleep on his sofa, and considering all that, Martin was not  _ intimidated _ so much as… trying his best not to fall in love with the man. He sighed and shook his head, rubbing at his eyes.

“You won’t be doing any work today.” It had been long enough since Jon last spoke that the statement seemed to come out of nowhere. “I don’t imagine you’d want to stay  _ here-” _ his mouth twitched just enough that Martin wondered if that was supposed to be a joke- “but I’ll be sure to make the document storage room more comfortable. I should have considered that sooner- I mean, honestly, just because it’s good enough for  _ me…” _ He trailed off, and Martin suspected the last bit wasn’t meant for him. It probably wasn’t the time to argue with Jon about the way he took care of himself, or rather, often didn’t.

Jon didn’t give him much time to think about it, anyway- not once he realized how late in the morning it was. He was in such a rush to get to the Institute before they were late, Martin hardly had time to feel weird about using his shower, let alone worry about anything else. Maybe he was still a little out of it, because it was all sort of a blur and then he was sitting on the cot in the archives, Jon telling him to lie down because he looked like he’d tired himself out just getting there.

And, well, he  _ had, _ but he was still trying to catch up with what was happening. Or maybe it was just that he was having trouble believing it. Jon looked like he was going to get irritable if Martin didn’t quit thinking so hard and rest, though. He’d gone and brought all those blankets from home, and an array of cold medicine, and evidently anything he could imagine needing. It was ridiculous, but Martin didn’t say anything, mostly because he was afraid he’d cry again if he tried. Jon reminded him to rest, and drink water, and tell him if he started feeling worse again, in the same stiff and professional tone he’d normally use for giving him a statement to follow up on.

“I’ll inform Tim and Sasha of your- current condition,” he said just before leaving, which had the unfortunate effect of making it sound like Martin was dying. “I’m sure they’ll be in to check on you at some point.” Martin nodded vaguely and shut his eyes as Jon shut the door.

Jon said that, and yet Martin was still surprised when it actually  _ happened. _ He was awake and staring at the wall, trying to muster the energy to go find lunch, when Tim appeared as if by magic and offered to bring him something. He stayed and kept him company, too- Martin wasn’t feeling up to talking much, but Tim was the sort of person who could keep a conversation going by himself if necessary, so that was alright. Then Sasha stopped by later and… well, she updated him on how many worms she’d seen on her way into the building, which didn’t  _ exactly _ make him feel  _ better, _ but… it was the thought that counted? She did change the subject once she realized. And she brought him some tea with honey for his throat, which was the important thing.

He only saw Jon again at the end of the day, after Tim and Sasha had already wished him luck in feeling better tomorrow and gone home. He pushed the door open quietly, so as not to disturb him, but Martin was already awake. He turned onto his side and looked up.

“Do you… want your blankets back?” He kept his voice low- it was still uncomfortable to use it at all.

“What?” Jon blinked as if he’d forgotten they even  _ were _ his. “No, I… I just wanted to check on you.” He cleared his throat. “Is there anything you need, while I’m still here?”

“No,” Martin said automatically, and then paused and actually thought about it. “No, I’m alright.”

“Ah. Good.” He nodded awkwardly. “Right. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Right,” Martin echoed. A moment later he remembered to add, “Thanks. For…”

“Of course,” Jon said softly as he left. “Take care, Martin.”

He closed the door, and Martin stared at it for a few more seconds afterward, smiling a little.


End file.
